settings – David Harley Words & Music

Some Housman settings on Substack

1. Epitaph on an Army of Mercenaries (remix)

A demo track — originally from an album of demo tracks that I may never be in a fit state to record properly. The raw guitar/vocal version was previously posted on Inspiration Point. However, this is a remix with some guitar and synth overdubbing that I quite like.

This 1917 poem by A.E. Housman takes longer to explain than it does to read.

It refers to the British Expeditionary Force, which German propagandists referred to as ‘mercenaries’ because at the outbreak of war, Britain’s army consisted of professional soldiers rather than conscripts or the later volunteers of ‘Kitchener’s Army‘. The BEF was practically wiped out by 1916.

A poem by Hugh MacDiarmid, ‘Another Epitaph on an Army of Mercenaries’ takes a very different view, regarding the BEF as ‘professional murderers’. I’m staying out of that debate. For now, anyway. This setting was originally intended for a suite of settings (including some Kipling) that was intended to lessen any residual jingoism. I’m still thinking about that one.

Words by A.E. Housman. Music, acoustic guitars, synth and vocal by me.

These, in the days when heaven was falling,
The hour when earth’s foundations fled,
Followed their mercenary calling
And took their wages and are dead.

Their shoulders held the sky suspended;
They stood, and the earth’s foundations stay;
What God abandoned, these defended,
And saved the sum of things for pay.

2. Severn Shore

A setting of Housman’s cheerful story of fratricide

I dreamed last night I was working on my ‘Tears of Morning’ album. Listening to it again, I probably should… Still, here’s my setting of A Shropshire Lad VIII from that album, which I’m fairly happy with. I thought Severn Shore was a slightly more attractive title.

‘FAREWELL to barn and stack and tree,
Farewell to Severn shore.
Terence, look your last at me,
For I come home no more.

‘The sun burns on the half-mown hill,
By now the blood is dried;
And Maurice amongst the hay lies still
And my knife is in his side.

‘My mother thinks us long away;
’Tis time the field were mown.
She had two sons at rising day,
To-night she ’ll be alone.

‘And here ’s a bloody hand to shake,
And oh, man, here ’s good-bye;
We ’ll sweat no more on scythe and rake,
My bloody hands and I.

‘I wish you strength to bring you pride,
And a love to keep you clean,
And I wish you luck, come Lammastide,
At racing on the green.

‘Long for me the rick will wait,
And long will wait the fold,
And long will stand the empty plate,
And dinner will be cold.’

3. On Bredon Hill (Summertime on Bredon)

A rerecording of my setting of the poem from Housman’s ‘A Shropshire Lad’. Still needs work, but I think the vocal has more character than the version previously recorded and released.

XXI – BREDON HILL

In summertime on Bredon
The bells they sound so clear;
Round both the shires they ring them
In steeples far and near,
A happy noise to hear.

Here of a Sunday morning
My love and I would lie,
And see the coloured counties,
And hear the larks so high
About us in the sky.

The bells would ring to call her
In valleys miles away:
“Come all to church, good people;
Good people, come and pray.”
But here my love would stay.

And I would turn and answer
Among the springing thyme,
“Oh, peal upon our wedding,
And we will hear the chime,
And come to church in time.”

But when the snows at Christmas
On Bredon top were strown,
My love rose up so early
And stole out unbeknown
And went to church alone.

They tolled the one bell only,
Groom there was none to see,
The mourners followed after,
And so to church went she,
And would not wait for me.

The bells they sound on Bredon
And still the steeples hum.
“Come all to church, good people,”–
Oh, noisy bells, be dumb;
I hear you, I will come.

Music by A.E. Housman. Melody, guitar and vocal by David Harley.

Probably more of these to come.

Keepsake Mill

My setting of a poem by Robert Louis Stevenson. From the New Silver Jug Band’s first album Farewell Reunion. The poem is from ‘A Child’s Garden of Verses’.

Link on recording on Bandcamp (you don’t have to buy it to listen). Keepsake Mill

Over the borders, a sin without pardon,
Breaking the branches and crawling below,
Out through the breach in the wall of the garden,
Down by the banks of the river we go.

Here is a mill with the humming of thunder,
Here is the weir with the wonder of foam,
Here is the sluice with the race running under—
Marvellous places, though handy to home!

Sounds of the village grow stiller and stiller,
Stiller the note of the birds on the hill;
Dusty and dim are the eyes of the miller,
Deaf are his ears with the moil of the mill.

Years may go by, and the wheel in the river
Wheel as it wheels for us, children, to-day,
Wheel and keep roaring and foaming for ever
Long after all of the boys are away.

Home from the Indies and home from the ocean,
Heroes and soldiers we all will come home;
Still we shall find the old mill wheel in motion,
Turning and churning that river to foam.

You with the bean that I gave when we quarrelled,
I with your marble of Saturday last,
Honoured and old and all gaily apparelled,
Here we shall meet and remember the past.

Words by Robert Louis Stevenson: ‘Dublin Shop Window’ image, tune and vocal by David Harley. All instruments by David Harley and David Higgen.

The Carpenter’s Son / Carpentry

In the 1970s, I put a tune to Housman’s poem The Carpenter’s Son. Not that I did much with it at the time. Much more recently, revisiting my Housman settings (probably as a result of having moved to Ludlow), I recorded a version that included some fairly ambitious (for me) guitar, then went further and recorded an instrumental version called Carpentry with additional instruments overdubbed. (Bouzouki and mountain dulcimer.)

This remix combines a more recent acoustic guitar and vocal version with part of the instrumental version appended. Whether it’s a good idea remains to be decided. :)

Backup version: